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Christa Zaat



Alfred James Munnings (British painter) 1878 - 1959
Portrait of Mrs Abigail Prince, s.d.
watercolour, pencil and bodycolour with scratching out 
36.6 x 53.9 cm. (14 7/16 x 21 1/4 in.)
signed A.J.MUNNINGS' (lower right)
private collection

Catalogue Note Bonhams
Abigail Prince (née Kinsley Norman) was the wife of wealthy American financier, Frederick H. Prince (1859-1953). One of America's most elite families, the Princes owned several estates in Europe and America, with their main residence, Princemere, located near Boston, Massachusetts. Munnings first became acquainted with Mr Prince when dining at the English Club in London, and further so during his trips to Pau, south-west France, where Mr Prince was Master of the Hunt. Munnings was quite taken by the Princes' lavish and fashionable lifestyle, reflecting in his autobiography that 'Mr Prince had a royal way of doing things [...] I doubt if he knew how many horses he had, how many polo-ponies.'1

In 1924, when Munnings travelled to America to judge the twenty-third International Exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Chicago, the Princes insisted he stay with them at Princemere before returning to England. The present lot was likely painted during this stay, when Munnings executed several equestrian portraits of Mr and Mrs Prince and their son, Freddie, as well as of their neighbours and friends. Munnings recounts his six months in America as 'gloriously mad days' filled with dinners and cocktail parties, but also as 'a trail of labour' given the overwhelming number of commissions he received.2

Mrs Prince was a glamorous and formidable lady, whom Munnings described as 'an original woman, with a strange turn of mind [...] always late for meals, late for sittings, late for the waiting car and chauffeur.3 She was known for her grand entrances to parties and dinners, dressed in the finest couture gowns, her collection of which is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and was exhibited as part of the 2010 exhibition, American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity. Munnings noted that whenever Mrs. Prince travelled by train or ship, she instructed her maids to cover the entire compartment with large white sheets, 'so that she should not touch anything where other people had been!'4

Mrs. Prince directed Munnings very precisely as to how she wished to be painted for her first sitting - in the style of an 1830s Lancer of the Spanish army - stating, "This is my own picture, and nobody else's [...] You are to paint me like that."5 The present lot, however, displays a more typical composition for the artist. Mrs Prince remains elegant and calm as she rides majestically through the sun dappled trees, with Munnings' bold, confident brushstrokes reflecting the sitter's strong character. A truly fascinating character, Munnings himself claimed that 'there could only be one Mrs. Prince in the world.'6

1 A. J. Munnings, The Second Burst, Bungay, 1951, p.165
2 ibid, pp.160-1
3 ibid, p.161
4 ibid, p.336
5 ibid, p.162
6 ibid, p.335